Nasal Orgasm Through Wine Aroma?

I love wine aromas and finding wine’s aroma. When we do our informative wine tastings in Buenos Aires, I tend to harp on this subject a lot because I personally find it so fun and exciting. While discussing this topic one night I was told a story (by my friend Talia – her blog here) about a group of people who evidently find nostril stimulation exciting (keep in mind that this was after everyone had had a lot of wine and felt quite comfortable with one another). Yes, this was news to me too but I found the stories so bizarre (inserting objects up one’s nasal cavity to induce sneezing – enough so to cause euphoria!!) that I had to read more about it. All I could find were these links on the Urban Dictionary:

I cannot believe that there is actually a term for this! I do find sneezing oddly pleasurable (once or twice) and do remember when I used to have sneezing fits when I was a kid in allergy season, but not enjoying this.

Then I thought about how oddly similar this is to the pleasure I get from wine aromas. When doing wine tasting, the aroma (for me at least) is at least 1/3 of the pleasure. Most professional tasters only approximate the aroma as 20% of any score they give, but I really feel it should be more. The aroma is like your sneak preview, your window on what the wine will be in your mouth.

It can also be so surprising what a wine tastes like after inhaling the aroma. A earthy, dirty smelling wine can be super fruity and complex in the mouth and vice versa. This is why we do what we do! Torrontes is even called the “liar’s grape” at times because the nose is so different than the mouth. Usually Torrontes has a super floral and sweet honeyed aroma, but a dry apricot / pear expression in the mouth with grapefruit and citrus flavors to boot.

So can wine cause a nasal orgasm? Well, not in the sense outlined by the Urban Dictionary, but I find it to be super fun and almost as important as drinking wine.